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Jason Pollard
Society closes the book and the jail doors on the ASBO generation. Who speaks for the hundreds of children held in Britain’s overcrowded juvenile jails? Not the Labour government, argues youth offenders’ panel member Jason Pollard, who fears state policy fails both the kids and the communities they come from. In August 2006 Rod Morgan, head of the Youth Justice Board, warned that prisons for 10 – 17 year olds were nearing operational capacity. Britain currently has some of the highest numbers of young people in custody in Europe, and at any time the juvenile estate holds over 2,500 juvenile offenders. Nearly 7,000 young people under 18 pass through the juvenile prison system each year. Does this warning mean that it is now time, nine years after New Labour came to power, to reassess the government’s approach to youth justice and the continued incarceration of ever higher numbers of under-18s?"
